Monday, June 23, 2008

On Pacman

I'm really sorry - I was the last person to hear about this. Forty-five minutes ago, I was sitting on the couch without a clue, watching I Love The New Millennium with one of my best friends. Since VH1 shows seven-minute segments with ten-minute commercial breaks, we started flipping stations in order to pass the time. When we flipped it to CNN, I thought that I was watching an April 2007 flashback.

I will keep this short and sweet:

1) If you listen to a tape of the incident - and when I say "a tape," I mean "a tape that lasts longer than 10 seconds" - Imus was trying to point out that Pacman was being targeted by the police because he was black. In other words, it was the police's prejudicial attitudes towards African-Americans.

2) Do the comments look damning when you first look at them? Sure they do, and that's why everyone in the media is wetting their pants over it. But listen to the tape again, and consider the history of the program since December 3rd.

3) They have a 45-second delay. None of them want to lose their jobs and ruin their reputation. If this was really such a big deal, why did nobody press the dump button? Why did nobody on the staff pipe up?

13 comments:

Possibly because the cast didn't think much of the comment at the time, or were not quick thinking. If there is a "dump button" at RFD TV, the fault lies with Bowman, who is black, not thinking much of the comment.

It wasn't until someone again, not thinking that it was a simple observation, jumps on the "OH! he did it again!" bandwagon, and tells AP, who, thinking it was on the same level with the Rutgers comment, manages to create a near riot by slapping that story in ever newsroom in the country. Some news hound not thinking, passes it along to every sports channel in the US, which proceeds to make it a topic of discussion on their talk shows...

Alot of the other folks who write columns, articles and blogs figured out what happened to Imus last time the real reason he was targeted and why they want him off the air. They are paying attention for this kind of incident.

There really are some stupid people in the world. The sad thing was that when I turned the news on, everyone was reporting "Imus is at it again!" and they didn't even include his "explanation." And they immediately judge that it's "racist" before I even listen to it.

One amusing point: I flipped it to MSNBC to see their reaction, and Contessa Brewer was all bug-eyed, practically yelling into the camera, "They made a RACIST COMMENT!" Good times.

I'm going to check out the major networks tonight and see what they have to say about this story. I'm crossing my fingers that it's on its way out.

On an unrelated note - after all the stress and scariness of this story, I couldn't stop laughing at that Shaq anti-Kobe freestyle rap that they played today. It pretty much made my morning.

He isn't going to take it like last time, when Phil Griffin insisted on the Apology Tour...he is going to Punch Back, that is how dumb these folks fling mud are they think oh this will be just like last time.... uh no Imus is on Networks that won't throw him under the Bus.